Five Tools in the Battle Against Eczema

My daughter has eczema. She developed it around three months old, and it literally covered her body. I will not disgust you with pictures of what eczema, particularly on an infant, looks like. Trust me (or, if you don’t, Google it), it’s awful.

To “cure” it, (those of you who suffer from it or know someone who does, are laughing right now), we started with her pediatrician. After failing to get it under control for weeks, he referred us to a pediatric dermatologist She told us it appeared to be caused by an allergy. She referred us to pediatric allergist.

At this point, the allergist had my daughter and me (I was nursing at the time) remove all of the following from our diet for 16 weeks:

Peanuts

Seafood

Cow’s milk (including cheese, yogurt, etc.)

Tree Nuts

Eggs

Soy

Wheat

Imagine a diet without this for four months. No pizza. No bread. Nothing pre-packaged as most of it has wheat or soy or both in it.

Probably the healthiest I’ve ever eaten in my life, but it meant absolutely no going out to eat. If we went to a friend’s house, I had to pack my own food. But I did it because I’d do anything to make my baby not hurt and itch.

At the end of 16 weeks, there was no improvement. It wasn’t food based.

As we were going through this, I began to research.

I read anything I could get my hands on regarding eczema. Reams of it. Some of it was good, a lot of it wasn’t.

Here Are 5 Things I Learned

1.It’s All About Moisture. – My daughter’s eczema clears up in the summer and comes back in the winter. We are fortunate she doesn’t have it year round, and this gave us clues as to what was causing the issue.

Her skin is losing more moisture in the winter, and this is giving the eczema the weakness it needs to take hold.

I tried lots and lots of eczema friendly skin moisturizers. Best thing I found was coconut oil gently rubbed into her skin (dye free, and the scent is all natural). We follow this by slathering her with baby aquaphor.

3. Dryer Sheets – I learned about dryer sheets, why I shouldn’t use them, and what to replace them with (and that I had to wash out the inside of my dryer). I use these from an Etsy seller. She was super helpful about how the balls were made so I could be sure they were made in a way that wouldn’t further irritate.

4. Detergents – I learned all about detergents, how they worked, and how they could cause eczema. This was HUGE. Detergents are in everything. Why? Because they are cheap and extremely effective.

I found a way to make homemade dish soap for our dishwasher. It works, but it’s not as good as detergent.

I still needed to tackle washing clothes and washing us.

Trying to find real soap (and not detergent in disguise – which darn near required me to get a chemistry degree) was incredibly hard. After a lot of searching, I eventually came across this place.

It’s amazing. Almost anything sold there is safe. Everything I have tried has smelled good and worked. It looks like the owner of the store might be a sufferer himself, and when he couldn’t find the products he needed, he went into business making them.

Nothing here is cheap, but it’s good stuff (and no, I’m not getting paid to say that). As a matter-of-fact, since switching over to these products, my husband no longer gets super -dry scaly hands in the winter.

5. Contact – I learned changing things out for just the little one wasn’t enough. Any of us that touched or held her had to use the same products or the residue on our skin could inflame her eczema. I had to wash all of our clothes as I did hers. We all had to use products that were okay for her.

We were fortunate. A combination of these techniques worked, and she is mostly eczema free. I just put in another order for the special hand soap as we’re getting low.

She still gets the occasional flare-up, and we have to reassess what might be causing it.

If you’ve ever had to deal with eczema, any tips on what you’ve tried? Anything work really well? If not eczema, something you ever spent a lot of time researching when traditional methods failed? What worked for you?

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